Iraqis take part in an anti-government demonstration at the Umm Al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, Friday. Tens of thousands of Iraqis took to the streets in Baghdad and other cities after prayers on Friday, in another show of discontent with Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. — Reuters BAGHDAD — Tens of thousands of Iraqi Sunni Muslims took to the streets in Baghdad and other cities after prayers on Friday, in another show of discontent with Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. Three weeks of mass protests reflect deep discontent among Sunnis who say Maliki's Shiite-led government has marginalized their minority community, increasing worries Iraq may slide back into the sectarian violence of its recent past. Sunni unrest erupted as the war in neighboring Syria, where mostly Sunnis are battling President Bashar Al-Assad, an ally of Iran, is stirring regional tensions and testing Iraq's own fragile sectarian and ethnic balance. Waving Iraqi flags and chanting against the government, several thousand protesters gathered with Sunni leaders and clerics outside Baghdad's huge Umm Al-Qura mosque, the city's largest mosque, which was built by the executed former leader Saddam Hussein. “These gatherings and rallies are not against a community, a political party or a person. They are against the unjust intentions of a government,” Sunni lawmaker Ahmed Al-Missari shouted in a speech to the seething crowd. “We will not accept being second-class citizens.” The unrest is developing into the most serious challenge yet for Maliki, a Shiite nationalist whom many Sunni leaders accuse of sidelining them from power-sharing, just a year after the last American troops pulled out of Iraq, an OPEC oil producer. Sunni lawmakers are also trying to win support from Maliki's Shiite and Kurdish rivals to oust him with a no-confidence vote in parliament, but the premier's foes remain deeply divided. Maliki, who spent years in underground exile from Saddam, has proven a tough opponent and survived an attempted no-confidence vote last year. Mass protests broke out in December after Finance Minister Rafaie Al-Esawi's bodyguards and staff were detained on terrorism charges. Officials say it is a judicial case, but Sunni leaders saw a sustained crackdown on their sect. Thousands demonstrators have been camped out on a major highway near the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi, about 100 km west of Baghdad, before the point at which it splits, with one road leading to Syria and another to Jordan. Violence has eased in Iraq, but Sunni-Shiite tensions remain raw after years of sectarian bloodshed following the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam in 2003. In Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, Sunni demonstrators raised Saddam-era Iraqi flags, waving a banner that read: “The wisdom of today: the gallows is the end of a dictatorship, do not forget.” Some carried caricatures of Maliki, one of them showing him fleeing on an Iranian plane. — Reuters
